


Hoop Skirts And Sexism

by Kissed_by_Circe



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV), Princess Sissi (TV)
Genre: 1800s, Alternate Universe - Historical, Sissi trilogy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-24
Updated: 2020-04-24
Packaged: 2021-02-28 16:25:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23380129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kissed_by_Circe/pseuds/Kissed_by_Circe
Summary: The plot of the 'Sissi' triology but with Gendarya and Jonsa
Relationships: Arya Stark/Gendry Waters, Jon Snow/Sansa Stark
Comments: 4
Kudos: 50





	Hoop Skirts And Sexism

**Author's Note:**

> So I recently rewatched all ‘Sissi’ movies and realised that while Karlheinz Böhm as Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria is still kinda hot, he’s also kind of a fuckboi, alone the way he treats Sissi and everything, so here’s a thing where I put Arya in the role of Sissi – and Robert Baratheon as Emperor. Please enjoy!

i.

Life in Winterfell is quiet, happy, idyllic; endless days and short nights filled with laughter and songs and feasts and games, and Sansa is courted by handsome young lords from the North and the Riverlands and the Vale. She’s sure that she’ll be betrothed to a strapping Blackwood or a dashingly handsome Royce or a sweet, but shy Redfort before the year ends, that she’ll be married before her twentieth name day to a man she likes and respects.

But then the queen is executed, and suddenly the king needs a new wife to give him an heir. He writes to her father, and she dreams of the man she was told about so much when they journey to Maidenpool, where they’ll attend a ball in his honour (no one tells her that he spends the summers there because of the healing waters, or that he’s no longer the man her father remembers so fondly).

He will court her for a few days, her mother tells her, they will celebrate his two-and-fortieth name day, and he’ll announce their betrothal during a grand ball. She’ll be queen, and a good one, she vows to herself, because she has all the traits and skills a graceful queen needs, and she’ll give birth to princes and princesses, and the people will love her –

ii.

Arya doesn’t like Maidenpool, she hates the disapproving glances people spare her when they see how she struts about, and she loathes her governess, lady Dustin, because the older woman keeps such a close eye to her, to keep her from embarrassing them all in front of the king. She doesn’t even want to meet him, she just wants to explore the town and make new friends and, maybe, dance at the ball, because she loves dancing.

It’s only natural for her to sneak out of the house her mother has rented for the duration of their stay (she’s supposed to support her older sister, but they brought a dozen ladies who’ll do it just fine, they don’t really need her), and it’s fun, at first. She meets a nice young officer just outside of town, who helps her climb over a fence, and saves her when her skirts get caught on the rough wooden planks, and the scenery truly is beautiful, not like Winterfell’s, but calm and soothing all the same.

She meets the king, out hunting in the woods, and they chat for some time (she doesn’t tell him who she is), and not even the way his gaze lingers on her boyish figure and sharp features and dark hair can dampen her good mood, and when she returns, no one has noticed her absence, so no one will punish her, and she can go to the ball, too.

iii.

The helpful young officer, it turns out, is no one but the king’s bastard son by some highborn lady, and heir to the throne (until the king marries Sansa, until she gives him a true-born son), and he’s even funnier when he tries to be serious. They dance, and the thought that they’ll be family once Sansa marries the king amuses them both. Her sister looks radiant on the king’s arm, and several ladies comment on how regal she looks, all pale skin and raised chin and cool calmness, and she’s happy for her. Sansa deserves to be queen, and she’ll be a good one.

The king doesn’t think so, or he doesn’t listen to his advisors, who are all in Sansa’s favour. He has seen Arya, who is wild and spontaneous and looks so much like the betrothed that left him for a Dornish knight more than twenty years ago. He’ll have her or no one, and she pleads with him – she doesn’t want to be queen, everyone knows that he’s to marry her sister, she cannot do this to her sister, her sister, _her_ _sister_ –

iv.

Sansa almost has a breakdown when the king announces his betrothal to Arya, but she doesn’t show it, she never shows anything (one of the reasons why the king doesn’t want her – she’s too calm, too collected, too _cold_ ), she smiles and bites back the tears. When Arya comes to her after the ball, and breaks down in tears, she starts plotting. “The king was drunk, he didn’t know what he said,” she tells a lady the next morning, the first of many, many courtiers she’ll tell this lie to, “he meant his son. He and Arya make a handsome pair, don’t you think?”

When Arya marries Gendry, the freshly appointed prince of Dragonstone, the king seethes and Sansa smiles. He has embarrassed her, tried to force her sister into marrying him, and she won’t feel bad for him.

v.

“I’m glad I didn’t marry her. She’s barren,” the king says, and he says it often during the first four years of her marriage, but Arya doesn’t listen. They haven’t been trying during the first few years, and when they consummated their marriage, three years after their wedding, they decided to use moon tea. She’s too young to bear a child, and Gendry wants to wait a few years, too, and they have all the time in the world. She’s not even twenty yet, and while her sister (still unmarried, a spinster as everyone says, and close to taking the veil and hide in a sister house for the rest of her life) looks at every babe and every rounded belly with longing in her sad blue eyes, Arya doesn’t want a child, at least not yet.

The king is cruel to her, and she cannot help but fear that he’ll take away any child she might bear, remembering poor prince Tommen, who almost died because of the upbringing his father deemed necessary for him. She won’t have a child as long as the king has power over her, she vows to herself, and hopes that Gendry will understand.

vi.

Her sister hates living at court, and when a maester, whose pockets are filled with Stark gold, tells the king that a holiday in Essos, with its warmer, drier climate might help with her barrenness and her hysteric fits (which she pretends to have when she doesn’t want to attend a ball or dinner), he sends all of them to Myr. Their stay does wonders for Arya, calming her rattled nerves, and Sansa gets to forget her troubles when a dashing young man at a bookstore offers to teach her bastard Valyrian. By the time she finds out that he’s the infamous bastard son of lady Lyanna, her father’s cousin, and the former white sword Arthur Dayne, she’s already helplessly in love with him.

vii.

King Robert dies. Aegon and Daenerys Targaryen win the iron throne. Jon Snow is legitimised as their heir.

viii.

“I vowed that I would be a good queen,” Sansa tells her sister on the steps of the great sept, while the people cheer for the blushing bride, and Arya smiles, her hand pressed to her bump, still hidden under her dress, “and I vowed to only have a child after Robert’s death. We both kept them, I see.”


End file.
